Skala Yellow House Villa

We have just returned after 1 week of a two week holiday at this villa and just so you get the picture of how bad this holiday was .

The problem is not the villa which is new, very well appointed and of a really good standard. The problem is where it is and the detrimental effect it has on the quality of time spent there.

The villa stands on the main road Island road between Skala and Poros and I really do mean on the road. It sits as one of a group of 3 villas (Blue/Yellow/Green House Villas) directly at the bottom of both the mountainside and the hill leading out of Skala. What this means is that every car, truck, container lorry, bus, coach, motor-bike, scooter and taxi roars up and down the hill past the villas from approx 6am until 1am the next day. The noise is simply unbearable and after 5 days we paid to come home as Thomas Cook (who now own Direct Greece with whom we booked) could not offer any alternative.

If you are not deaf or don't have an abnormal tolerance to noise this will drive you crackers. You cannot even use it as a base to travel the island in the day and so miss the bulk of the noise as between 6pm and after midnight the road becomes the main taxi rat-run to and from Skala and the many hotels, apartments and villas outside as people commute to/from the bars and restaurants in the resort centre. This means literally hundreds of taxi trips zooming past until the early hours.

This traffic pattern also ruins the best feature of the villa, i.e the upstairs balcony, which has great views out to sea is virtually unusable as that is where the noise is worst due the the open aspect to the road and hill as every vehicle changes gear and accelerates upwards.

At this time there are also a number of villas being built in the immediate vicinity and the builders operated mechanical diggers, jack-hammers and grinders from around 9am to 9pm.

If you are looking for a quite, relaxing and peaceful villa to get away from the stresses of everyday UK life this is definitely NOT the place to go.

I wish someone had written this before I went and I would have saved myself £2.5K and a lot of grief.